Cleanup & Remediation

Mark Gilbertson, one of the top supervisors at the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch, is calling it a career at the end of the month, the agency said Tuesday. Gilbertson, currently associate principal deputy assistant secretary for regulatory and policy affairs, is retiring after 25 years at the DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) […]

The Savannah River Site’s management contractor requires employees seeking a medical exemption from a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination to submit a certified form from their doctor, while those seeking a religious waiver might have to be interviewed and file supporting documents from a minister. That is according to Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) documents distributed to […]

The Department of Energy now expects the Salt Waste Processing Facility built by Parsons at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina will treat roughly four million gallons, rather than six million gallons,  during its first full year of operation, an agency official told the state Nuclear Advisory Council Monday. Parsons finished hot commissioning of […]

Despite the dismissal of some workers who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19, the Department of Energy and its contractors at the Savannah River Site do not currently expect big personnel shortages in fiscal 2022, federal officials told the Nuclear Advisory Council to South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster on Monday. Of the total 1,056-member workforce […]

The Department of Energy will solicit more public input this fall on plans for a new low-level waste landfill, the Environmental Management Disposal Facility project, at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, before issuing an updated draft of its record of decision in December, according to an agency spokesperson. The DOE Office of Environmental Management […]

“In the Dark of the Valley,” a documentary about the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, is scheduled to air nationwide on the MSNBC cable network on Nov. 14 at 10 p.m. Eastern Time, the Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles and other groups announced recently. The documentary film explores a 1959 nuclear accident involving a commercially-owned sodium […]

Vaccination holdouts at two of the first Department of Energy contractors to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations filed lawsuits against their employers, pleas are being made to elected officials on behalf of those who don’t want the shot and labor unions are wrangling with management at nuclear sites about mandate implementation. Those are a few highlights from […]

Funeral services were scheduled for Nov. 9 at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., for a submarine officer who had a second career in the civilian nuclear world as a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board staffer for most of the last decade. Captain John Pasko (Ret.) died Sept. 7, according to a post published Sunday […]

A pump-and-treat system that captures groundwater contamination near radioactive waste tanks inside the Hanford Site in Washington would be expanded under a joint interim record of decision announced Wednesday by state and federal agencies.  The interim decision for groundwater operable units in Hanford’s 200 East Area — 200-BP-5 and 200-PO-1 — was issued jointly by […]

A legal dispute over the Department of Energy’s issuance of a landlord services contract for the Paducah Site in Kentucky to Swift & Staley, is apparently still percolating at the Small Business Administration’s Office of Hearings & Appeals. Late last month, Judge Thompson Dietz of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims granted another party in […]

Although the buildings have been torn down, there is still plenty of remediation work left for the Department of Energy in coming years at its portion of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, a spokesman for the California Department of Toxic Substances Control said. That probably won’t sit well with a group of five Californians in […]

The Department of Energy has selected one new member and reappointed five current members to the Paducah Citizens Advisory Board, the agency said recently in a press release. Eric Butterbaugh, an analyst for a computer firm, is the new appointee and will serve a two-year term. The five incumbent members receiving a new two-year term […]

A member of the South Carolina legislature from Aiken, Rep. Melissa Oremus, (R), urged Gov. Henry McMaster (R) to help stop planned firings of holdouts who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19 at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the Fluor-led management contractor at the federal complex along the Georgia […]

A pump-and-treat system that captures groundwater contamination near radioactive waste tanks inside the Hanford Site in Washington would be expanded under a joint interim record of decision announced Wednesday by state and federal agencies.  The interim decision for groundwater operable units in Hanford’s 200 East Area — 200-BP-5 and 200-PO-1 — was issued jointly by […]

With a Friday deadline looming, the Fluor-led operations contractor for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina is making plans to fire employees who have refused COVID-19 vaccinations while also issuing a final plea for the holdouts to get inoculated. In a Monday staff email, viewed by Weapons Complex Morning Briefing and […]

Although the buildings have been torn down, there is still plenty of remediation work left for the Department of Energy in coming years at its portion of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, a spokesman for the California Department of Toxic Substances Control said. “The soil cleanup is expected to finish around 2034,” Russ Edmondson, a […]

As of Sept. 30, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has recorded more than 6,900 cases of COVID-19 and dozens of fatalities within the weapons complex since the pandemic began, according to data provided Friday by a spokesperson. The number of deaths is now 41 among federal and contractor employees in the DOE […]

An article in the Oct. 6 edition of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing [“DOE Completes Startup Testing for Liquid Disposal at Waste Treatment Plant”] should have said that by December, Hanford crews will gradually start heating up the first melter at the Low Activity Waste Facility to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Department of Energy contractor officers should by Friday, and unilaterally, if necessary, modify the agency’s existing major site contracts to include a COVID-19 mandate, according to long-awaited guidance published Wednesday by DOE. The directive applies to “Management and Operating (M&O) contracts, major site/facility contracts and onsite support service contracts,” the agency wrote in the guidance. […]

A federal judge nixed a fishing expedition for a big tranche of data sought by people who live near the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site and who are trying to organize a class action lawsuit against eight current and former DOE contractors at the rural Ohio site. In a mid-September court filing,U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth […]

More than 60 members of the Washington state legislature this week asked President Joe Biden to reconsider the Department of Justice’s challenge to an “overwhelmingly bipartisan state law to provide industrial insurance coverage to workers made sick” while doing cleanup work at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site. In 2018 the legislature easily passed HB […]

A contractor for the Department of Energy has finished tearing down the last of 18 buildings at the Energy Technology Engineering Center within the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Simi Valley, Calif., the agency said this week. The last of the buildings at the Energy Technology Engineering Center (ETEC), Sodium Pump Test Facility, came down […]

The Department of Energy should award a new long-term contract for cleanup of the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee by the end of the year, agency officials said at an annual conference sponsored by the Energy Technology and Environmental Business Association Wednesday. Angela Watmore, the acting deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and project management for […]

The Southern Bench fire, which burned about 1,000 acres since late August, has been put out by firefighters from the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the operations contractor for the Nevada Site said this week. The Southern Bench wildland fire is now “fully contained and extinguished,” […]

The Department of Energy’s advisory board for the Portsmouth Site in Ohio postponed a meeting scheduled this week in Piketon, Ohio and planned to reschedule it, according to a statement from the administrative contractor for the board. A Monday email from EHI Consultants, on behalf of the advisory board cited two factors. First, “the high […]

Ty Blackford, who was CEO of the Jacobs subsidiary formerly in charge of cleanup at the Central Plateau of the Hanford Site in Washington state, is leading transition efforts for the Jacobs-led joint venture scheduled to take over remediation for the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory by Jan. 1. That is according to a […]

Cleanup efforts at the site of one of the U.S.’s worst radiological releases is proceeding without issue, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said after a recent site inspection. A Sep. 16 inspection of the former United Nuclear Corporation (UNC) Church Rock uranium mine concluded that the General Electric team tasked with dismantling the site is “conducting […]

A Sept. 24 article in Weapons Complex Monitor [“DNFSB Questions if Time Made Stranded Drums Safe for Travel”], should have identified a Sept. 8 letter to the Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office as a letter requesting a report. The article relied upon an incorrect reference to the letter on the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety […]

The Department of Energy should award a new long-term contract for cleanup of the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee by the end of the year, agency officials told an annual conference sponsored by the Energy Technology and Environmental Business Association Wednesday. Angela Watmore, the acting deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and project management for the […]

Nobody was hurt Monday morning when a truck caught fire in the 200 East Area of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, according to a notice posted on the website for the federal property. The fire occurred under the hood of the truck loaded with an empty container from the Site’s Environmental […]